Users browsing online websites have conventionally been limited to e-mail correspondence for customer service assistance. User inquiries regarding product purchases, services, or hotel room and rental car reservations often result in waiting periods from hours to days for responses from website customer service departments. Often, e-mail responses from customer service departments do not address the information requested by the user, and the user must either inquire again and clarify the original question, or give up on the inquiry, and possible purchase, altogether.
More recently, text instant messaging between users and customer service representatives for select websites has aided users in acquiring information while browsing online. However, communication problems may arise with customer service systems that support only text messaging. Examples of such problems may include misinterpreted inquiries, miscommunication between the customer service representative and the user, delayed typing periods resulting in communication disconnections, or the like. Oftentimes, these types of interactions do not resolve problems that users experience with the websites, and users are left to make purchasing or other decisions with no substantive customer service assistance.